December 09, 2009
By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
All of the hype around Black Friday and Cyber Monday is looking like it paid off, according to early data reported by comScore. They reported that online holiday spending in the United States has grown 3% to roughly $16 billion over the first 36 days of the November to December season. The week ending on December 6th was the strongest of the year at $4.6 billion. This was also stronger than any week of online sales in 2008, which was one of the worst years in decades for the economy. Internet retail giants like Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy all started pumping up specials and deals way before Black Friday, and will continue to do so up until just a week before Christmas. Consumers are searching for top video game deals, electronics deals, and other bargains for home appliances and furnishings.
Overall the data seemed to indicate a more cautious, but savvy, shopper who wants to put products in their shopping cart and check out as long as they get a deal this holiday season. Many shoppers also wait until they get their mid month paycheck in December and shop at the last minute in hopes of still catching some great online bargains. Chairman Gian Fulgoni also indicated that comScore predicts this current week will be very strong as the days before the holidays decrease and shoppers rush to finish their shopping. Another interesting bit of data was reported by comScore indicated that 28% of those shopping this holiday season were influenced in some way by social media. This may have been a user review, expert reviews, or special deals being promoted via Twitter and Facebook. Driving sales online has become increasingly important to many businesses such as Dell computers who have reportedly sold $6.5 million via Twitter with their now 1.4 million plus follower base. They constantly tweet a great daily deal and entice consumers to their site to try and convert them to a paying customer. Next week new data should come out that will give us an indication of how the year will close out for online sales.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
